Local group works to keep connection to awards program

Annual San Diego symposium hasn't raised the profile of little-noticed Kyoto Prizes as founder had envisioned

KYOTO, Japan – Kazuo Inamori is a billionaire and Buddhist priest, a hard-headed tycoon and soft-hearted philosopher, a consensus-builder and boat-rocker. He is a study in contradictions, as is his relationship with his home-away-from-home.

He is enchanted and frustrated by San Diego.

He still hopes that this city will be the key to his dream: international recognition and respect for the Kyoto Prizes, annual awards he established to honor global leaders in advanced technology, basic sciences, and arts and philosophy. Attached to each award is a sizable check – 50 million yen, or $486,000 – and even larger hopes.

"We would like to believe that our endeavors are contributing to building a brighter future for humankind," Inamori said.

Outside Japan, though, humankind has been slow to notice. Since 2002, in a bid to win the world's attention, Inamori has sent Kyoto Prize laureates to speak at an annual post-awards symposium in San Diego.

The problem is the world has taken little notice. Ditto, most of San Diego.

"Some sessions drew only 20 to 30 people," said Tom Fat, a San Diego restaurateur who helped organize last year's symposium and related events.

The 20th annual prizes were bestowed last month during lavish ceremonies in Kyoto, Japan's ancient cultural capital. A San Diego delegation attended, anxious about losing the symposium to another city and eager for one more chance to make it work – but were they too late?

"I hope we see you in San Diego next year," one delegate told Heisuke Hironaka, a retired Harvard professor of mathematics and a Kyoto Prize executive committee member.

"Again?" Hironaka replied. "They were talking about last year being the last time in San Diego."

In the end, Inamori agreed to let San Diego host the Kyoto Laureate Symposium for another three years. The next is March 2-4.

But the Californians, led by Fat and real-estate magnate Malin Burnham, believe the extension is San Diego's last chance to be a part of Inamori's dream.

Why should San Diego care?

Why should anyone care about the dream of an engineer who grew up on the far side of the Pacific, a sickly child in a poor family from an obscure Japanese town?

Beyond death

At the age of 13, Kazuo Inamori was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The scourge had already killed two of his uncles, and the boy believed he was next.

This was in 1945, and his hometown, Kagoshima, offered many ways to die. Food was scarce and disease rampant. The night of June 17 and the next morning, U.S. B-29 bombers raided this southern Japanese port. By dawn, almost half of the city was rubble.

One day, the bedridden boy was visited by a neighbor. She brought a set of the works of Masaharu Taniguchi, a Buddhist thinker. Devouring the books, Kazuo forgot about life's inevitable destination and began pondering the varied routes along the way.

The war ended. The boy recovered. Japan's defeat meant hard times for the family, and an older brother and a younger sister left school to work. But Kazuo, an indifferent scholar, was ordered to continue his studies.

"My siblings made that sacrifice," he said. "I studied very, very hard and my academic scores rose to the top."

Still, he was not exactly on the fast track. He attended a so-so college and, after being turned down by several major corporations, took a job with a small Kyoto ceramics manufacturer.

The company offered low wages, uncertain finances and frequent strikes. Inamori responded in traditional Japanese fashion: He worked days, nights and weekends, developing new ceramic products for TV sets and other electronic devices.

In 1959, clashes with the director of engineering led Inamori to defy corporate Japanese tradition. He quit. Even more astonishing, seven colleagues walked out with him. Then, with the equivalent of $10,000, they founded Kyoto Ceramic Co. Ltd., later shortened to Kyocera.

The first years were tough. In 1961, 11 senior scientists presented Inamori with an ultimatum signed in blood. They demanded guaranteed wages, with generous raises, for the coming years.

He refused, but countered with a supremely Japanese offer: "I will share the benefits of the company so your difficult life will improve. And if we are very, very successful and I do not share with you the benefits of our work and discoveries, then you can kill me."

Inamori occasionally gambles and consistently wins. In 1985, he bankrolled a rival of the government-subsidized telecommunications giant and former monopoly NTT. His startup, KDDI, now owns 21.3 percent of Japan's mobile phone market.

As for Kyocera, its ceramics are found in everything from computers to medical equipment. In the fiscal year that ended in March, the corporation posted sales of $10.96 billion.

Now semi-retired, Inamori is alive and – like all who followed him from the beginning – very, very rich.

Seduction, Japanese-style

In a hillside villa above Kyoto's ancient palaces and temples, guests reclined on cushions in a cedar-paneled room. Through floor-to-ceiling windows, gardens gleamed in the starlight. At the front of the room, geishas swayed to a shamisen's mournful twang.

"They show only a little bit of skin," a Japanese businessman sighed. "So erotic!"

The food was superb. The booze was unlimited. The service was unmatched – at the door, three valets helped guests out of their shoes and into slippers.

And this was just one of several galas Inamori hosted during the week surrounding the 20th presentation of the Kyoto Prizes.

There was the banquet, attended by Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado, eight ambassadors, dozens of university presidents and deans, hundreds of corporate executives.

There were the laureates' lectures, delivered in cavernous Kyoto International Conference Hall.

There was the prize ceremony itself, also in the conference hall, a spectacle complete with symphonic fanfares, a children's choir and a whirling "Dragon God" in crimson robes.

Most of these events were not "erotic," but they were uniformly seductive. They all affirmed that the Kyoto Prizes are a Big Deal, a Major International Event that is – remember this phrase – "the equivalent of the Nobel Prizes."

As a young engineer, Inamori dreamed "that I might win the Nobel Prize with my research." But the 103-year-old prizes, established by Alfred Nobel, are awarded in six fields defined by the Swedish scientist and inventor's will: chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, literature, economics and peace. Nothing for engineers or musicians, computer scientists or researchers of industrial ceramics.

In 1984, Inamori established the Inamori Foundation with 20 billion yen – or about $86 million – of his savings. The next year, the first Kyoto Prizes were awarded to two American scientists, one French composer and one Swedish institution: the Nobel Foundation.

Since then, the awards have honored dozens of luminaries, from primate researcher Jane Goodall in 1990 to pop artist Roy Lichtenstein in 1995. In fact, San Diego can claim three laureates: Sydney Brenner, a molecular biologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 1990; Kurt Wuthrich, a structural biologist at Scripps Research Institute, 1998; and Walter Munk, an oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1999.

But it is difficult for a relatively new international prize to gain international attention. The competition is ferocious.

In 2001, for instance, the Norwegian government instituted the annual Abel Prize, dubbed "the Nobel Prize for Mathematics."

The Fields Medal, established 65 years before by the International Congress of Mathematicians, makes the same claim. The Fields, though, is awarded once every four years and then only to mathematicians who have not yet turned 40.

Math isn't the sole field trying to elevate its top prize to stratospheric heights. The Pritzker Prize (founded in 1979) is "architecture's Nobel." The Turing Prize (1966), "computer science's Nobel." The Templeton Prize (1972), "religion's equivalent of a Nobel Prize." The Ramon Magsaysay Award (1958), "the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize." The Stockholm Water Prize (1991), "the equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize in the field of water conservation."

There's even the Noble Prize (2001), awarded by the United Cultural Convention of the United States.

How, then, to judge the Kyoto Prizes' stature?

a) Ask the winners.

"I think in the United States, its recognition came a little on the slow side," said Dr. Alfred George Knudson Jr., a Philadelphia-based cancer researcher and the 2004 Kyoto Laureate in Basic Sciences. "I think now it is being recognized as a different kind of prize, because of the breadth of the creativity being recognized."

b) Better yet, ask the locals.

"Not only in Japan," Inamori said, "but in every country in the world, if a local award is set up, it is usually local people who are honored. . . . Sometimes, we've gotten criticism from Japanese people that too few laureates are Japanese."

Of the 65 Kyoto Prizes awarded to individuals to date, eight have gone to Japanese. Americans top the list with 29. Inamori insists that this kind of nationalistic score-keeping is irrelevant.

"The critical thing is the contribution to the whole of mankind. That makes national borders meaningless. If we focus on the contributions to all mankind, you have to think in terms of the globe."

c) Better still, ask history.

The Nobel Prizes have had more than a century to become the gold standard of international awards. Perhaps it is too early to assess the Kyotos.

Still, there are signs that the Kyoto selection committee is shrewd and informed. To date, four Kyoto laureates – including Salk's Brenner and Scripps' Wuthrich – later received Nobels. Only one person has received a Kyoto after taking the Nobel.

Inamori is not wasting his yen. But does his passion translate in San Diego?

The Kyoto what?

Business first brought Inamori to San Diego in 1971, and business has kept him coming back. His trips became more frequent after Kyocera's North American headquarters was moved to Kearny Mesa in 1975. Today, he averages four or five visits a year.

These are tightly focused excursions.

"Actually, my route is from the airport to the hotel to the company to the plant. I know some restaurants where we eat. I went to the zoo. I've visited SeaWorld, but where else, I don't know.

"But . . . I love San Diego very much."

In 1996, the University of San Diego bestowed an honorary doctorate of humane letters on Inamori. He responded by inviting Alice Hayes, then USD's president, to attend the Kyoto Prize ceremonies in Japan.

She did, several times, and perceived a kinship between the prizes' humanistic spirit and the goals of USD's new Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice.

In February 2002, all but one of the 2001 Kyoto laureates came to the institute for three days of lectures, concerts and panel discussions. It was the first year of the post-award symposiums in San Diego.

The next year's laureates also visited USD. Though architect Tadao Ando's speech was sold out, many sessions were sparsely attended. Unhappy with the turnout, Inamori began to consider his options.

Some felt that a re-evaluation was overdue. To publicize the Kyoto Prizes, doesn't it make sense to abandon San Diego for a major U.S. media market, such as New York or Los Angeles?

"Yes, it could be that way," Inamori allowed. "However, for the Kyoto Prize it is important that it be where there are people who understand and love the Kyoto Prize. I was impressed by the enthusiasm and passion expressed by former President Hayes."

Upon hearing of Inamori's dismay over the poorly attended events, restaurateur Tom Fat began thinking of ways to raise the symposium's profile. Then he called Malin Burnham.

"I want you to help me put on a gala," he told the retired real-estate magnate.

"What gala?"

"For the Kyoto Prize."

"What's that?" Burnham asked.

Fat filled him in. Then Burnham did his own research. He was astonished to find that a major international award had a strong link to San Diego. A link that seemed in danger of snapping.

Is the problem ignorance or indifference? Even San Diegans who are familiar with Inamori and his awards might wonder why they should care whether the laureates continue coming to town. These are the Kyoto Prizes, after all, not the Kearny Mesa Prizes.

But Burnham and Fat maintain that this association could boost the region's less-advertised qualities.

"We are known for our beaches and weather," Fat said. "Can you imagine what it could mean for San Diego to be associated with these intellectual prizes?"

Moreover, San Diego's universities and high-tech and biotech firms could trumpet their advances in two areas honored by Kyoto Prizes: advanced technology and basic science.

What would sell San Diego on the Kyoto Prizes?

"Promotion and exposure," Burnham decided.

This year, the San Diego symposium opened March 3 with the gala dinner envisioned by Burnham and Fat. Scholarships of $10,000 apiece were awarded to three Tijuana students and three San Diegans. The laureates appeared at USD, as well as at the University of California San Diego and San Diego State University.

Burnham, though, wants more. In Kyoto last month, he urged Inamori to establish a full-time presence in the United States: The Inamori Institute of – why not? – San Diego.

"This would promote the Kyoto Prize on a permanent basis here in San Diego," Burnham said. "And it could encourage scholars to do research and write papers and give lectures on Dr. Inamori's philosophy, on his concerns for peace and justice and brotherly love around the world."

Is this possible?

"We may not be able to reach a conclusion," Inamori said last month, "but I am very happy to continue the conversation."

He smiled. A considerate host, Inamori has mastered the art of hospitality. The night after the prize ceremonies, he invited 100 guests to Warin-an, Kyocera's guest house. After the wine was poured and before the geishas danced, the billionaire host went from table to table serving lean steak and fat scallops.

The diners included the laureates; Japanese businessmen; a dozen San Diegans, including Burnham, Fat and representatives of USD and UCSD; and officials from Case Western University and Alfred University. The Cleveland and upstate New York universities have received large donations from Inamori.